Inside the Beltway

HOT AS IN “HOT”?

Though she’s not running for president, Fox News founder Roger Ailes still drew gleeful reactions from liberal journalists for explaining his decision to hire Sarah Palin as a contributor because, “She was hot and got good ratings.” Mr. Ailes shared that brief aside in a wide-ranging Associated Press interview on the network’s 15th anniversary.

The press automatically assumed that Mr. Ailes, 71, meant Mrs. Palin was hot, as in hubba-hubba hot. There was no mention of the possibility that Mr. Ailes could have been referring to hot, as in ratings hot, or buzz hot. Besides, Mrs. Palin is a, uh, brunette, some note.

“I thought Roger Ailes likes blondes,” observes Andy Parks, host and sergeant-at-arms of The Washington Times’ daily radio show.

THE JUVENILE RABBLE

It was not so long ago that liberals tried to answer the might of the tea party with their own “coffee party,” which essentially boiled down to decaf. These days, noisy progressives rally under a call for a “middle-class uprising,” urging followers to rescue the proverbial American dream from Republican gluttons, grass-roots style.

It’s “pathetic,” says National Review editor Rich Lowry, who looks askance at Wall Street protests in Manhattan and elsewhere.

“In the Occupy Wall Street movement, the left thinks it might have found its own tea party. MoveOn.org and some unions have embraced the protesters. The left-wing Campaign for America’s Future is featuring them at its conference devoted to reinvigorating progressivism. Liberal opinion-makers have celebrated them,” Mr. Lowry says, dismissing liberal tea partyers as “juvenile rabble” without much heft.

“The right’s tea party had its signature event at a rally at the Lincoln Memorial where everyone listened politely to patriotic exhortations and picked up their trash and went home. The left’s tea party closed down a major thoroughfare in New York City — the Brooklyn Bridge — and saw its members arrested in the hundreds.

“What was remarkable about the right’s tea party is that it depended on solid burghers who typically don’t have the time or inclination to protest anything. Occupy Wall Street is a project of people who do little besides protest.”

OBAMADARE

Note to Republican strategists: Deft White House wordsmiths have retooled the dreaded “Obamacare” word for Democratic gain. And here is the big reinvention, the big debut — all fresh and breezy from President Obama’s speech before a fundraising crowd in St. Louis just 48 hours ago:

“They call it Obamacare? I do care. You should care, too,” the president told his audience.

“The Obamacare line is getting big applause at the fundraisers,” observes Christi Parsons of the Los Angeles Times, the White House pool reporter who witnessed the phenomenon.

But such things are always interchangeable. Don’t forget that “Obamascare” has been in the alarmed public’s vernacular since 2009. Obamadare or Obamablare might get big applause at fundraisers, too.

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